


Between the Shadow and the Soul

by windfallswest



Series: Love or War [4]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, New Warriors
Genre: Brooding, M/M, Poetry, Smut, not in that order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:25:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a thing Kaine does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Shadow and the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the nebulous gap between the end of New Warriors 2014 and the beginning of Spider-Verse.

Kaine still wasn't used to sex feeling good. Before, everything had hurt. Sex had at best been about taking control of the pain. At the very best, about giving pleasure to someone else. More often, it had been the only urge he could satisfy. Sometimes, it had been about forgetting; sometimes, about pretending he could give up. Sometimes it had been about punishing himself; others, about punishing someone, anyone else for the damnation he laughably called his life. Sometimes it had been about the hollow, aching loneliness in his gut. Sometimes he paid for it; sometimes he bled for it. 

The worst times had been when he was seduced by the hope it could drive the pain back.

Vance... _smiled_ at him. Not in the alarmingly overenthusiastic way Aracely did, or even in a dirty I-want-to-peel-you-out-of-that-suit-like-a-banana way (most of the time). But that serious, determined, stick-up-his-butt look cracked into an expression like he was actually happy to see Kaine. This was not, in Kaine's experience, the usual response to his presence. 

He kept waiting for Vance to get all gooey on him and it kept, thank god, not happening. He was a talker, though; Kaine could tell. There was only so much longer he was going to be able to duck a Conversation. Kaine's Parker was buried pretty deep, but apparently he turned into a spaz whenever these things came up. Stupid Parker. Stupid Parker luck. 

In the meantime, Kaine was more than willing to put the work into acclimating. Vance was cooperating by finding other uses for his mouth. This was somehow the first blow-job of Kaine's new life, and all he could think was that it was a good thing Vance was a novice or he'd be dying all over again. 

Wet heat closed around the head of Kaine's dick, and his brain pretty much checked out after that. His eyes kept rolling up just watching Vance's lips around the shaft. Kaine was already a big fan of his mouth; Vance was an amazing kisser, and it wasn't going to take him very long to figure out blow-jobs. As it was, Kaine had stuck his hands to the headboard, far away from Vance's head, to keep from accidentally pulling his hair out.

The next several minutes were lost in a fog of bliss. Kaine didn't care what kind of sounds were coming out of his mouth. It felt too good not to just let himself have this; he'd pay when the balance came due, and it always did. Screw karma; Kaine was coming his brains out down Vance's throat. God, that was just satisfying.

Vance crawled up to straddle his waist and tugged his arms down. Kaine opened his eyes. There was a bit of come at the corner of Vance's mouth, so he pulled Vance down to meet him halfway and licked it off. 

Yeah; good kisser. Kaine sat up the rest of the way, shifting Vance onto his lap. Vance made an appreciative noise and pressed closer. He was hard and eager; he wanted Kaine, but only because he didn't really know him. 

Trouble was, the wanting went two ways. Kaine would put his cock in him again right now, except he didn't think Vance was going to last long enough. 

He ran a hand down Vance's chest, creating some space between them to work with. Vance resisted until he bent to bite at a nipple. That got him some cooperation. And squirming. The moaning didn't start until Kaine got a hand around his cock, though. 

Blunt fingernails scratched through his short hair. He was feeling so good still that the tenderness in Vance's touch didn't even bother him. 

Looking down, Kaine could see the swollen dark purple head of Vance's dick peeking in and out of his fist. A whimper in his ear told him Vance was watching now, too. Deliberately, Kaine licked his palm and resettled his grip. He pulled faster, harder, emphasising the little twist he usually put in at the top of a stroke in order to secure Vance's full attention. Vance's lips were practically on his ear, begging him to keep going, not to stop, repeating his name until Kaine had to squeeze his eyes shut. _C'mon, c'mon, c'mon_ , he thought, or maybe growled. 

Kaine's other hand was splayed over Vance's back, holding him upright. The curve of his spine tightened under Kaine's spread fingers when he started to come. Vance's breath drew in sharply, and he shot messily over both their stomachs.

Their mouths found each other somehow in the aftermath as they sank down into the mattress together. Soft and sloppy all over. 

Vance had a tendency to fall asleep after he came. Kaine lay there watching him, arm draped over his waist, Vance's hand on his hip. 

He was good-looking. Not unreasonably good-looking, but nice to look at. He had a, you know, a face, with a bit of a cleft to his chin. And dimples; Kaine knew they were there because of all the smiling. No one as uptight as Vance had any business looking that cute. Cute was certainly not a thing that Kaine got. This was all a terrible, horrible mistake and it was going to end disastrously. Probably in blood again. How, _how_ had Kaine ended up sleeping with a good man?

His thoughts drove him up; Vance barely stirred. So trusting. Or maybe he was faking it. 

No, he had no reason not to trust Kaine. He'd tried to warn Vance, but the idiot refused to be deterred. 

Kaine stepped straight into the shower. This place was no Four Seasons, but it had decent water-pressure. The residual aches from the dust-up that had brought them all together earlier were all that kept his awareness of his pleasure-drenched body from crossing the line into the surreal. It wasn't that he got off on pain; it had just always been what he had to work with.

When you were hurting, if you hurt bad enough, you'd do almost anything to make the pain stop. But there came a point when even the hope of reprieve deserted you and you forgot what it was like to live any other way. Kaine didn't think he ever had, before. He had woken up one day after leaving New York feeling different, even more than the lucidity that had washed over him like disgusting psycho symbiote slime. His body felt almost numb without constant spikes of agony shooting through his limbs with every movement. His breath didn't burn anymore. For maybe hours he'd lain supine in the bus seat, just letting his lungs fill all the way. It was like he'd never tasted air before. 

No pain; no visions; and, unbelievably, no one chasing him (he'd been right not to believe: there was always someone chasing you, whether you knew it or not). A second chance. A better chance.

When he came out, Vance was still asleep in his bed. Kaine fought down an impulse to crawl in behind him, like dreamless sleep might be contagious. Instead, he left him with a rumpled sheet pulled up over the nakedly seductive lines of his body.

It was late. There was no one in the hallway, but Kaine could hear voices in the kitchen. Speedball and Water Snake; no way he was getting in the middle of that.

Kaine had begun paying closer attention to Speedball (strike one: the name) since Aracely started showing an interest in him. He was fairly sure there was more to his story than a crying need for some Ritalin. Scars peppered his skin like freckles, punctures and deep scratches. It almost looked like something had blown up in the kid's face, big surprise, except for the mess. None of the wounds had healed cleanly; the scar-tissue was too thick, and they clustered on top of each other, overlapping. Maybe somebody had dropped him into a patch of brambles. There were probably crazy plant-villains wandering around, right? Kaine thought he'd heard about that kind of thing. 

Vance trusted him; but then, Vance had a lot of excess faith in humanity. And he was pretty sure Vance had never dated the guy. Kaine had a hard time imagining _anyone_ dating Speedball. Then again, he had a hard time getting his head around someone wanting to date him. God, that was _not_ what they were doing. 

He'd never expected someone like Vance. That was to say, Kaine had expected plenty of people like Vance, hounding him, judging him, looking down their ethically blameless super-hero noses. Peter had believed in him, knowing what he'd done; but even he had finally realised that some things could never truly be forgiven. Death did not heal wounds.

Vance didn't understand yet. And when Kaine tried to talk himself out of this, his practised mantra of rationalisations all fell inconveniently apart. Most of the reasons he had had for pushing Annabelle away didn't apply here. Vance didn't need help finding trouble: he went looking for it all on his own, and all evidence pointed to his being able to handle the fuck out of it anyway, which instead of supporting Kaine's point was more along the lines of being stupidly hot. Vance did not need protecting. And he wasn't even a little bit secretly evil.

No, the problems were going to come when he found out what Kaine really was. Kaine didn't even know why he was sticking around waiting for it. 

Aracely rounded a corner and he winced guiltily. She deserved to be around people like these, even if they were obnoxious; but she was inexplicably attached to him, and if he left she'd probably follow him again. Ripping her away from this opportunity just so, what, he could protect his _feelings_? was just selfish. Maybe she'd wise up by the time the inevitable happened.

Aracely stopped and stared up at him. "'Tu se amas como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.'"

Kaine scowled and thought hard about how sorry he was that being around her had improved his Spanish. 

"Jar," she told him serenely and continued on down the hallway, heading straight for the commotion.

Wanting even less to do with it now, Kaine turned off into the tech lab with the big windows. Whoever had worked here had been human enough to drag in an L-shaped couch and hook videogames up to the two biggest screens. He figured he'd stare up at the night sky and think at his costume for a while until it stopped being full of holes.

Kaine flopped down onto the couch. He missed cable. Couches were good, but it was nice having a television to stare at while you turned your brain off.

Something was digging into his back, so he fished it out. It was a book. Some of the pages were bent now, and as Kaine smoothed them out, he saw it wasn't really a book at all. At least, not a book-book. Poetry. Probably Sun Girl's, or maybe the Nova kid's homework.

Kaine straightened another page and felt his eyebrows crowd together. This was—not kid poetry. _When death wears life like an endless night._ He felt a chill run down his spine. 

"Oh, hey! So that's where I left that." Kaine looked up to see Speedball, who must have lost the Namorita argument. Again. Wait, _Speedball_? "You can borrow it if you want."

Kaine blinked several times, but the mask hid things like that. "Uh...thanks."

"No problem." Speedball shrugged and wandered away again.

He sat up reading all night.

**Author's Note:**

> Te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,  
> secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
> 
> (I love you as one loves certain dark things,  
> secretly, between the shadow and the soul.)  
>  _―Pablo Neruda, Soneto XVII_
> 
>  
> 
> During the Scarlet Spiders arc of Spider-Verse, Kaine's narration mentions the poem Death Self by V.B. Price; and while it's definitely the sort of poetry Kaine would go for, I started wondering what Kaine was doing with a book of poetry in the first place. This is what I came up with. 
> 
> The most complete version I've been able to find (it's a long-ass poem, okay?) is in the _Broken and Reset_ anthology. Bless inter-library loans.
> 
> from Death Self by V. B. Price:
> 
> **XV. Again and Again**  
>  That's what they mean  
> by 'waking up',  
> by 'dying to who you are'  
> —that's Death Self,  
> the guide,  
> the way into being  
> alive as you die,  
> day after day,  
> living your death  
> with every breath,  
> timeless and ending,  
> beginning and done. 
> 
> Fear dies  
> when death is alive,  
> when death wears life  
> like an endless light.  
> That's why  
> the now never dies  
> when death is your guide  
> for fear's not there  
> to divide it.


End file.
